ORDER CARNASSIER. 



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character of the Tiger, in its natural state, presents no such 

 palliation. When its appetite is satisfied, the former seems 

 no longer delighted with blood ; but butchery appears to 

 afford gratification to the latter, even after its hunger has 

 been satiated. 



This animal is the scourge of Asia and the Indian Islands. 

 Equal to the Lion in stature, though generally inferior in 

 strength, it wants not courage and ferocity to attack that 

 animal; but although the combat is sometimes furious, it 

 generally falls a victim to its temerity in so doing, unless 

 some disparity of age or other circumstance should bring 

 the strength and power of the two animals more to a level. 

 Its swiftness and strength enable it to seize a man while on 

 horseback, and to drag, or rather to carry him in its mouth 

 by bounds and leaps into a jungle or forest, in spite of all 

 efforts to prevent it, short of musket-balls : indeed, the 

 weight of a man, or even of a more ponderous animal, in 

 its mouth, does not appear to incommode or delay the or- 

 dinary swiftness of the beast. 



Mr. Marsden informs us, that the Tigers in Sumatra 

 prove to the inhabitants there, both in their journeys and 

 even their domestic occupations, most fatal and destructive 

 enemies. The number of people usually slain by these ra- 

 pacious tyrants of the woods is almost incredible. Whole 

 villages are sometimes depopulated by them. Yet from a 

 a superstitious prejudice, it is with difficulty they are pre- 

 vailed upon, by a large reward which the India Company 

 offers, to use methods of destroying them, till they have 

 sustained some particular injury in their own family or 

 kindred, and their ideas of fatalism contribute to render 

 them insensible to the risk. Their traps, of which they can 

 make a variety, are very ingeniously contrived. Sometimes 

 they are in the nature of strong cages, with falling doors, 

 into which the beast is enticed by a goat or dog enclosed 

 as a bait. Sometimes they manage so that a large beam is 



